It is known to create customised documents using document templates or master documents. In our system, customised documents are generated using master documents which contain portions of document content, such as text or images, which are selectively incorporated into the resulting customised documents. For example, portions of document content included in the master document may be included in the final customised document only if certain conditions are satisfied. Such portions of document content may be referred to as conditional document content. The master document may also include portions of document content which are included unconditionally in the final customised document.
In one example, a social services document customised to a particular person who is the subject of the document may be generated from a master document. If the subject is pregnant then the final document may need to include a portion of text relating to the pregnancy. In this case the master document contains a specific text portion relating to pregnancy which is only included in the final customised document if it has been determined that the subject is actually pregnant. The final document may also need to include a standard clause which is included regardless of pregnancy but whose wording differs depending on whether the subject is male or female. In this case, the master document contains two text portions corresponding to the alternative clause wordings. One or the other of the two text portions is selectively included in the customised document depending on whether the subject is male or female.
The information required to generate a customised document may be represented by one or more variables. In the examples given above, a first variable ‘Pregnant’ which can take one of the two values ‘True’ or ‘False’ is used to represent whether the subject is pregnant or not. A second variable ‘Gender’ which can take one of the two values ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ is used to represent the gender of the subject. In our system, the variables may also take values indicating that the value of a variable is unknown or indefinite.
The variables associated with a master document may be used to form logical statements which may in turn be used to specify the conditions which need to be satisfied for each portion of document content to be included in the customised document. For example, the logical statement Gender IS ‘Female’ may be formed which evaluates to True if the subject is female and evaluates to False if the subject is male. This logical statement represents the condition which must be satisfied (i.e. evaluate to True) for the standard clause relating to female subjects to be included in the customised document. The simplest logical statement is a variable such as ‘Pregnant’, which can take the values True and False, appearing on its own. In this case the evaluation of the logical statement is simply the value of the variable. Such a variable, ‘Variable’, appearing on its own as a logical statement may be considered to be shorthand for Variable IS ‘True’. More complicated logical statements may also be formed by combining simpler statements using the logical operators AND, OR and NOT. For example, the logical statement (Gender IS ‘Female’) AND NOT(Pregnant) may be formed which evaluates to True only if the subject is female and not pregnant. The conditions (in the form of logical statements) which dictate whether particular portions of document content are included in the customised document may be referred to as usage statements.
The way in which portions of document content are incorporated into customised documents may be represented in the form of a mark-up of the master document. For example, a portion of conditional text in the master document may be indicated as such by enclosing the text in square bracket, [. . . conditional text . . . ]. The usage statement associated with a particular portion of document content is indicated as superscript on the inside of the left-hand bracket associated with the portion of document content, [Usage Statement . . . conditional text . . . ]. The conditional document content is included in the customised document only if the usage statement associated with that conditional document content evaluates to True. For example, the mark-up [Gender IS ‘Male’ Text portion 1 . . . ] indicates that the text ‘Text portion 1 . . . ’ is included in the customised document only if the subject is male. Similarly, the mark-up [Pregnant Text portion 2 . . . ] indicates that the text ‘Text portion 2 . . . ’ is included in the customised document only if the subject is pregnant. In the example given above where alternative clause wordings are used depending on whether the subject is male or female, the master document contains [Gender IS ‘Male’ Clause wording 1 . . . ] [Gender IS ‘Female’ Clause wording 2 . . . ]. The position of the document content in the customised document depends on the position of the document content within the master document.
Variables such as ‘Name’ or ‘Address’ may also appear in the text portions. When a variable appears within a portion of text, the variable may be distinguished from the rest of the text by being shown between curly brackets, {variable}. One example of a conditional text portion illustrating this is [Pregnant The mother is {Name} who lives at {Address} . . . ].
In our system, in some cases, where particular predefined portions of document content, such as standard clauses need to appear in several master documents, it is often more convenient to store such portions of document content in separate files. For example, a clause file may be provided which contains several conditional portions of document content representing variant wordings of a standard clause, one of which is eventually chosen to appear in a customised document. The selection of a particular variant of clause wording is controlled by one or more generic variables or usage tags appearing in the clause file. Each master document can separately define the meaning of the usage tags to allow the standard clauses to be used in different ways by different master documents.
For example, in the case of a governing law clause in a legal contract, the three usage tags ‘USA’, ‘Europe’ and ‘Rest of World’ may be used. One exemplary clause file contains the following portions of conditional text.                [USA This agreement is governed by the laws of the United States of America.]        [Europe This agreement is governed by the laws of the European Union.]        [Rest of World This agreement is not governed by any specific jurisdiction.]        
The portions of conditional text which are included in the customised document cannot be determined until the usage tags are defined. In one master document the usage tags may be defined for example in terms of usage statements involving the specific variable ‘SalesOffice’ as follows.    USA SalesOffice IS ‘NewYork’    Europe SalesOffice IS ‘London’ OR Sales Office IS ‘Paris’    Rest of World SalesOffice IS ‘Other’
In another master document the usage tags may be defined differently in terms of usage statements involving the specific variable ‘Sales Region’, for example as follows.    USA SalesRegion IS ‘North America’    Europe SalesRegion IS NOT ‘North America’    Rest of World FALSE
When a master document uses a standard clause, the relevant clause file is identified in the master document at the location at which the clause is to appear using the mark-up {include CLAUSE_FILE_NAME} comprising the ‘include’ command. Then, when the master document is processed to create a customised document, at the specified point, the contents of the clause file are inserted into the master document. The usage tags are then replaced with their definitions specified in the master document. After this process has been carried out, the master document can be processed normally.
Items such as portions of document content, variables, usage statements and commands may be referred to collectively as document elements.
Although the examples given above represents one form of mark-up, other forms of mark-up may also be used. Our U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/434,753, incorporated herein by reference, discloses two different forms of mark-up notation and a system and method for converting a master document written in one mark-up notation to a master document written in a different mark-up notation. More complex mark-up notation may also be used. For example, our International patent applications, publication numbers WO 2005/024653, WO 2005/024654, WO 2005/024656 and WO 2005/024660, incorporated herein by reference, disclose several examples.
In order to generate a fully customised document it is necessary to determine the values of all the relevant variables so that the usage statements can be evaluated which in turn allows a determination to be made as to which of the portions of conditional document content to include in the final customised document. This information may be collected by means of a questionnaire which a user completes to assign values to the variables. In the social services examples given above, a user may be asked a first question enquiring as to the gender of the subject. If relevant, a second question may then be asked enquiring as to whether the subject is pregnant. The questionnaire may be presented to the user in the form of a series of web pages for example in which the user types answers into text boxes or checks tick boxes corresponding to predefined alternative answers.
The questionnaire may be generated automatically by analysing the master document and determining from the mark-up and the variables present which questions to ask. Our International patent applications, publication numbers WO 01/04772 and WO 03/061474, incorporated herein by reference, disclose systems and methods for generating a questionnaire from a master document.
In our system, a master document may contain a description of the attributes of the variables used in the master document. This information may be used to assist in the generation of the questionnaire used to collect information relating to variables.
For example, the variable attribute description for a variable may comprise the name of the variable, an alias for the variable and a questionnaire prompt, specified respectively in ‘name’, ‘alias’ and ‘prompt fields’. The prompt, for example in the form of a question, is displayed in the questionnaire to a user to prompt the user to provide the necessary information. The alias may be displayed next to the prompt to indicate to the user which variable the question relates to.
The variable attribute description may also comprise a ‘type’ field containing information specifying the type of input required from a user completing the questionnaire to assign a value to a variable. This could specify for example ‘select’ if a user is required to make a selection from one or more predefined alternative answers, or ‘date’ if a user is required to enter a date in a text box. The questionnaire may use the type field to properly configure the input interface for each question. Where the input type is ‘select’ the variable attribute description may comprise a selection field which specifies the possible selections that can be made.
The variable attribute description may also comprise a form field which specifies any relevant restrictions on the input. For example, if the type of input is ‘select’ then the form field may specify ‘single’ indicating that the user input is restricted to making exactly one selection. Alternatively, the form field may specify that the user may make two or more selections. In another example, when the type of input is ‘number’ then the form field may specify that an integer is required.
One exemplary variable attribute description for the variable ‘SalesOffice’ is the following.
NameAliasPromptTypeFormSelectionsSalesOfficeSalesSelect theselectsingleNew YorkOfficesales office:LondonParisOther
It can be seen from the above description that various definitions and other information are used in the document generation process. Examples of such definitions and other information include a list of the variables used in the master document, and information about them, such as the variable attribute descriptions. Other examples include usage tag definitions and information regarding the specific formatting of customised documents generated from the master document. Other examples of information used in the document generation process will readily occur to the skilled person. This information may be stored in a special section of the master document, which may be referred to as a master document dictionary, or dictionary for short.
In some cases, a customised document may be generated from several master documents. This may be the case for example where the document structure is complex so that it is more convenient to generate the customised document from several inter-related sub-documents rather than a single master document. In this case each master document used in the document generation process uses an identical dictionary.
One problem with known techniques when a customised document is generated from several master documents is that when a dictionary needs to be modified, the dictionary section in each separate master document needs to be identically modified. This increases the time and difficulty in maintaining the document generation system and increases the chances of errors occurring.